My new article on the digital divide and the future of education

My latest article, “Higher Education, Digital Divides, and a Balkanized Internet” , appeared this week in the EDUCAUSE Review, as an editor’s pick. In it I explore what the digital divide actually is in the United States, starting from a quick survey of its history, then diving into how it plays out in the present for education. Naturally the focus is on the future – and how higher education can address this serious problem.

Here’s the conclusion, or the sting in the article’s tail:

Academic and IT leaders have the ability — indeed, the obligation — to think carefully about the future. Strategic plans are predicated on this type of extended vision, as are college and university commitments to supporting generations of students for lifelong learning. If new and deeper digital divides loom ahead, threatening to split apart not only students but also communities, can higher education leaders in good conscience resist taking action now?

The alternative is to acquiesce to an increasingly Balkanized Internet, in an increasingly divided nation, with increasingly accepted inequalities. Is that a future we can accept? Is that a world we can help build through our actions and policies? Or is it a future that higher education academic and IT leaders, with all of their creativity and commitment to students, can and should oppose?

My thanks to everyone who helped see this article through, from the Review’s awesome editor Teddy Diggs to my splendid Patreon supporters.

Reblogged this on As the Adjunctiverse Turns and commented:
as early, privileged users, all academics, not just “leaders,” futurists and random guerrilla educationists, should be part of thinking about this future, pushing back against the digital divide and other inequalities that come with a Balkanized internet.

Some real meat on the bones of this article. Something that I can’t say about some of the other articles featured at the same time inER. Nice work. We keep creating new divides while rarely actually bridging the others.